Media files, such as audio files and video files playable on portable media players, often have associated image files that are displayed during browsing or playback of the media files. For example, motion picture experts group audio layer 3 (MP3) files and other audio file formats have associated ID3 tags or other metadata fields that store images displayed with the MP3 files are browsed by a user or played. One type of image file that is often stored in the ID3 tag is an image of an album cover that is displayed during browsing of albums or songs or during playback of a song. Image files containing graphic artwork are also associated with video files and are displayed when the video files are browsed or displayed in an electronic library.
Because album covers and other images associated with media files are works of visual art whose copyrights may be separately controlled from the rights in the underlying media files, it is not always possible for users or media file providing services to obtain rights to the original album covers or other images that are distributed with hard copy versions of media files. For example, a media file providing service may wish to provide media files and associated graphic artwork to its users. If the media file providing service is unable to obtain rights to the graphic artwork associated with the media files, then the user's experience in accessing the media files is diminished, as the media files are not associated with visually appealing or even unique images. For example, if media file management software on a users computer associates a default image with media files that do not have images embedded in their ID3 tags, each of these media files will be associated with the same default image, making visual browsing of media files stored in an electronic library difficult.
Some existing cover art retrievers and/or generators rely on complex analysis of media file content or media file metadata to retrieve or generate cover art. Such complex analysis is processor intensive and can delay the time for obtaining media file graphic artwork. Moreover, generation techniques that rely on media file content or metadata may be produce the same graphic artwork for a given set of inputs, resulting non-unique images. For example, one user who desires to generate media file graphic artwork for a given media file where the generation algorithm relies on media content or metadata may find that his or her media file graphic artwork generates the same graphic artwork for the media file as the media file graphic artwork generator of another user. Such non-unique images may be undesirable if a user desires his or her graphic artwork to be unique or different from that of other users.
Further, different sets of metadata and/or image content may result in the generation of media file graphic artwork for media files of the same user that are the same. As a result, the user may not be able to distinguish between the different media files whose automatic, content-based media file graphic artwork generation resulted in the same media file graphic artwork.
Accordingly, in light of these difficulties, there exists a long felt need for methods, systems, and computer readable media for automatic generation of graphic artwork to be presented during displaying, playing, or browsing.